


Camp Waverider

by performativezippers



Series: Gentlewomen Prefer Blondes [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: AvaLance, AvaLance Oneshot, F/F, Jesus fucking christ, Why is this happening, based on the camp episode, like everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 00:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16482338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/performativezippers/pseuds/performativezippers
Summary: “Hey.” You reach out a hand, careful to make your voice as gentle as you can, like when you’re talking to your uncle’s jumpy horse Gary after the lawnmower’s gone by. “Hey, I’m sorry. It’s okay. You don’t have to get in.”But she’s pushing your hands away. She’s ineffectually batting at them, and that’s weird too, because normally she won’t shut up about how she likes to box, and she set up that rugby club among the other counselors, and you know that, if she really wanted to, she could rip your arms out of your sockets without even trying. But she’s just…flapping at you.“I have to go,” she mumbles, and she’s turned and fled before you can blink, leaving you standing on the man-made beach surrounding the tiny man-made lake, the canoe making soft lapping sounds in the water behind you.





	Camp Waverider

**Author's Note:**

> to welcome myself to the Avalance fandom, a summer camp AU that is probably much like everyone else's summer camp AUs

“No,” she says, and she’s waving her hands in front of her body, and she’s backing away a little bit, with these tiny steps that you’re not sure she knows she’s taking. “No, no boats. I don’t do boats.”

 

And you don’t mean to be rude, but it’s just, this is the same girl who jumped off a building earlier tonight, and last night had snuck you into the archery range at midnight to shoot like five of the dummy arrows at once, and the night before that had been sitting up on a roof, lazily spinning a bottle around, leaning backwards like she wasn’t about to tumble headfirst into the night air.

 

So you don’t mean to be rude, but you can’t help what comes out of your mouth. “What, are you _scared_?”

 

“No,” she snaps, but it’s much too quick, and she’s still edging her feet away from the canoe, like she’s worried the ground beneath her is going to turn to quicksand and suck her into the tiny lake.

 

And you don’t mean to gloat, but you’re just so surprised. “You are! Of all the fucking things in the world to be scared of? You picked _boats_?” You drop the rope you’ve been holding, assured that the canoe is still on dry land, and you try to make your way towards her. “And this…this is a _canoe_. It’s not even a boat.”

 

She steps back again, but this one is a big step. “Shut up.”

 

But you’ve gotten closer and you can see that she’s pale underneath her freckles and that her eyes are little wide and that her usual look – sardonic, unimpressed, sly, a little bored – is completely absent.

 

She’s actually afraid. Not nervous, like how you’d been on the roof. Not worried, like you were when she jumped off the building. Not scared of being caught breaking rules, like you were at the archery range.

 

Not paralyzed by the crazy idea that maybe she would _kiss_ you if the bottle stopped spinning right in front of you, like you’d been two nights ago.

 

No, she’s afraid. Absolutely, completely afraid.

 

You hadn’t known that she had that in her.

 

“Hey.” You reach out a hand, careful to make your voice as gentle as you can, like when you’re talking to your uncle’s jumpy horse Gary after the lawnmower’s gone by. “Hey, I’m sorry. It’s okay. You don’t have to get in.”

 

But she’s pushing your hands away. She’s ineffectually batting at them, and that’s weird too, because normally she won’t shut up about how she likes to box, and she set up that rugby club among the other counselors, and you know that, if she really wanted to, she could rip your arms out of your sockets without even trying. But she’s just…flapping at you.

 

“I have to go,” she mumbles, and she’s turned and fled before you can blink, leaving you standing on the man-made beach surrounding the tiny man-made lake, the canoe making soft lapping sounds in the water behind you.

 

* * *

 

She avoids you for days and you don’t get it. You try to apologize – you didn’t mean to make fun of her, you were just surprised, that’s all – but she evades you every time like a fucking ninja or something. Which is truly impressive since she’s sleeping in your same cabin.

 

Or, she’s supposed to be.

 

“Have either of you seen Sara?” You’re brushing your teeth with the other girls, crowded around the one stupid sink in the tiny bathroom some brilliant camp administrator thought would work for six young adult women all summer.

 

Amaya shakes her head but Zari answers, her mouth full of foam. “Ihnk ze zptwe ja la ni.”

 

Amaya manages to shove her before you even consider it. You’re new this summer and they’ve known each other for years, so you’re still feeling out the relationship. “Spit, then talk,” Amaya advises.

 

You can’t quite get a handle on Amaya. Zari you get, and you like. She’s sarcastic and pissed off but she loves the kids and you can tell that she loves her friends, even if she only shows it by throwing gummy worms at their heads. But Amaya has this sort of superiority thing going on, like she’s wise beyond her years. You think it’s probably because she’s been with that guy with the hair since they were basically babies. So even though she’s a little younger than you, she seems so…settled down. Adult.

 

And you’re fucking 23, for god’s sake, but still. She has opinions on things like countertops and she always looks put together and she’s never gotten too drunk in the canteen and had to be hoisted up into her top bunk like you have.

 

Just the once, but, still. It’s hard to live that down.

 

Zari spits and rinses. “I think she slept with John last night. Sara, I mean.”

 

Your blood runs cold. John is…ew. His uniform is always half off, and he calls you ‘love,’ which makes you want to vomit. He thinks he can get away with saying all kinds of inappropriate shit just because he’s British, but, newsflash, it’s an American summer camp so half of the counselors are British. Or Australian, which, honestly is better, in terms of sex appeal.

 

And even the Americans at this camp are better looking than his bleached-tips, out of shape, perpetually hung-over ass.

 

Okay, it’s possible that you’re jealous. But just…ugh. Ew.

 

Amaya raises one perpetually perfect eyebrow. “At least it’s not Oliver again this year,” she says, her tone as unflappably calm as always.

 

You must make a sound, because Zari turns to you. Amaya fluffs up her (already perfect) hair just once before she walks out of the bathroom, but Zari lingers. “You…you knew about her and Oliver, right?”

 

“Oli—the Arrow? And Sara?”

 

Zari rolls her eyes. “That fucking nickname. God.” She pops a stick of gum in her mouth and sighs. “I want to punch him so much.”

 

You can’t help but snort.

 

“He gave himself that nickname, you know,” she says, holding out the pack of gum to you. “When he was sixteen. Shot two arrows at once into the bullseye or some shit, I don’t know. Before my time.”

 

You forget, sometimes, that even though this is your first summer, Zari wasn’t an original member of the group either.

 

You try to be nonchalant, rubbing sunscreen into your face like her answer doesn’t matter to you. “And he and Sara…?”

 

“Banged,” she says simply. She’s resting her hip on the side of the sink and you know you’re busted. “It was a couple years ago. It was all scandalous because I guess he’d been dating her sister for a couple of summers, but,” she shrugs one shoulder. “Drunk eighteen-year-old idiots have been doing dumb shit since the dawn of time.”

 

She stands upright, putting away her toothpaste. “And we all know Sara can be an enormous idiot.” You think she’s done, but then she turns back and motherfucking winks at you. “But that’s why we love her, right?”

 

You choke, accidentally swallowing the gum.

 

* * *

 

You were hired for this dumb camp job because you’re a climber and have the right safety certifications to run the ropes course, not because you’re good with kids. Or even like kids, actually. But the climbing gym you work at wants to make you a manager but they wanted you to have more experience, so they sent you to work at this dumb camp for the summer before they’d promote you.

 

Which is all just a way of saying, you’re not a camp person. Sure, you were a girl scout and you like the outdoors and everything, and you even remember some of the songs from the couple of years your parents shipped you off to camp while they were “working things out.”

 

But you’re not here because of the kids, and you’re not here because you’d die without spending a summer at camp.

 

You’re here for the job.

 

But it’s turned out, these last two weeks, that the job is a lot less fun without friends.

 

Without one friend, in particular.

 

* * *

 

She’s running gymnastics, which you hadn’t even realized was a thing at summer camps. But a gross cough has been sweeping through the camp, Waverider Plague, everyone is calling it, and several counselors are down so the rest of you are having to step up.

 

You haven’t had an activity period off in three days, and it looks like Sara hasn’t either, because she’s walking up to the ropes course with a group of excited eight-year-old girls, clearly filling in for their counselor.

 

“Hey bluebirds,” you call from your perch up in a tree, trying to make your voice as cheerful as you can. “You all ready to climb some ropes today?”

 

Most of them cheer. Sara won’t meet your eyes.

 

You climb down a little faster than usual, your drop down to the ground a little longer than normal, but Sara doesn’t look impressed. She has her back to you, actually, while she kneels down to tie a girl’s shoe.

 

The girl is eight, she can tie her own shoes.

 

It’s very clearly a dismissal.

 

You break the girls into two groups and send one to work with Mick while the other will stay with you. Sara, obviously, goes with Mick’s group. Which…fine. You don’t really love working with Mick – he’s a bit on the careless side, for you, for things involving the physical safety of young children. So usually you’re happy for the counselors to go over to his side, to have another pair of adult hands nearby.

 

But today it feels pointed.

 

But, whatever.

 

The hour passes pretty quickly, since you can’t see her or hear her, and the girls are so light and easy and pre-pubescent that they follow all your rules, don’t talk back, and are easy to hoist around on the ropes as they climb the rock wall.

 

But then, from about thirty feet away, you hear one _scream_.

 

You bark out an order to the girl on your rope, and she blessedly follows your instructions, letting go of the rock wall and letting you belay her down to the ground as quickly as you can. You order them all to stay with both feet on the ground and then you _run_ , flat-out sprinting to the high ropes course.

 

You see the problem immediately. One of the girls, a cute little one with her hair in two thick braids, has slipped off the high bridge she was walking. Normally that would be fine, but Mick is holding both ends of frayed, broken rope in his hands, and you know immediately what happened.

 

Her rope broke, and she’s now hanging on with both hands to the bottom of a very rickety narrow bridge, over twenty feet up in the air.

 

You swear, loudly, and you start running again, heading for the most direct route up, but Mick throws out a hand to stop you. “Blondie’s already up,” he grunts out, and you can tell he’s terrified. “Two people might shake it too much.”

 

You look, and you see he’s right. Sara is already halfway to the girl, moving with astonishing quickness and this surety to her movements like she’s done this a million times.

 

“She’s not wearing a rope,” you gasp, but he just grunts again.

 

“Wasn’t time.”

 

You’re already wearing a harness from belaying your girls on the rock wall, so you frantically look around for an undamaged rope and start feverishly setting yourself up.

 

But before you can finish, the girls on the ground all gasp. You look up, the rope in your hands forgotten, as Sara arrives at the edge of the bridge. She starts to walk across it, her arms held out for balance, and you don’t even realize you’re holding your breath.

 

You can hear her talking to the girl, her voice soft and soothing. “It’s okay,” she saying, and something in her voice is mesmerizing. “I’m almost there. I’ve got you. Just hold on.”

 

She’s being so careful with each of her footsteps, making sure she doesn’t jostle the bridge too much, but going as quickly as she can.

 

She finally, finally, reaches where the girl is. She lowers herself, so carefully, with so much control, onto one knee. You can see she’s bracing herself, keeping one foot outstretched to her right because she’s going to have to bend over to her left to hoist the girl back up and she doesn’t want the whole bridge to flip.

 

She plants her foot, and she says, “I’ve got you,” and you can’t tell if it’s over too quickly or if it’s in slow motion, but she reaches down and she grabs the girl and she pulls her up onto the bridge.

 

It’s an incredible feat of balance and upper body strength and calm in the face of terror, and you never could have come close to that type of rescue.

 

You come back to yourself, scrabbling with the ropes, finishing your set up, desperate to get up there and get them both hooked up to safety.

 

But Sara doesn’t wait for you. She gathers the girl in her arms and carefully stands. You want to scream, but you manage not to make any startling sounds. The girl is wrapped around Sara like a koala, her arms around Sara’s neck and her legs locked tight around her waist. Sara does fine walking back across the bridge, but there’s no way she’ll be able to climb the twenty feet down with this child attached to her like this.

 

“Sara, stay there. I’m coming up with harnesses,” you call, but Sara shakes her head.

 

“We’re coming down,” she says, like it isn’t impossible.

 

“Sara! Follow the rules for once in your life and just freaking wait for me!”

 

But she doesn’t.

 

She never has.

 

She starts the descent, making it down one tree ladder and one full rope before she gets to the first landing, about ten feet up. It’s a very narrow landing, just about six inches across. “Stay there,” you yell again, but she’s not listening. She’s dropped to one knee again, and she’s clearly trying to get the girl to let go of her, but the girl is shaking and crying and trembling and honestly you can’t blame her.

 

Sara sighs, and goes to stand up with the girl still latched to her, and you see the second her foot slips off the platform.

 

Someone screams her name – maybe it’s you, you don’t know – but they’re falling.

 

Sara wrenches her body around, and somehow miraculously the girl manages to unlock her legs, so that when Sara takes the brunt of the impact, falling directly onto her back, the girl’s legs and ankles aren’t shattered underneath them.

 

Sara’s body, and Sara’s head, hit the ground with an enormous thump. The bluebirds are all screaming, and you’re there in a heartbeat. You pull the girl up first, checking her quickly for visible damage before passing her to Mick. She can stand, so she’s not your priority right now.

 

Because Sara is down and Sara isn’t moving.

 

You rip the radio off your belt and throw it at one of the teenaged Counselors in Training. “Call the Professor,” you snap, unable to remember the doctor’s real name. But the nickname seems to do it because you hear the radio crackling to life behind you.

 

“Sara! Sara! Hey, wake up. Come on, you’re scaring all the bluebirds.” You try not to cry in front of the girls but this is the scariest thing that’s ever happened to you. “Wake up, god damn it, Sara.”

 

But she doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

The Professor comes, and with him the camp director Rip and a bunch of other people. They carefully set her neck in a brace and lift her into the back of the camp’s pick-up truck and drive her to the edge of camp where you wait, breathless, for an ambulance to come from town.

 

It’s a long wait. You’re in the bed of the pickup with her, and the Professor is bouncing around but you’re just holding her hand. And telling her that she’s an asshole.

 

“Language,” a voice rasps out, and you almost give yourself whiplash.

 

“Sara!”

 

“Don’t say that shit in front of the kids, Sharpe.”

 

You use your one free hand to wipe the tears and snot off your face. “You scared off all the kids, Lance.”

 

That gets her to flutter her eyes open, and you’ve never seen something so pretty. “I scared the bluebirds?”

 

“Yeah,” you choke out. “Every last one of them.”

 

“Aww,” she groans, her eyes closing again. “That’s no good. I’m the canary. We’re supposed to be pals.”

 

The Professor gives you that hand signal, like he wants you to keep her talking. Keep her awake.

 

“What’s with that nickname anyway? I don’t think you ever told me.”

 

“Oh, you know. They’d always find me on the cabin roof, after Laurel and I had a fight when I was really little. And when I was eleven I dressed up as Tweety Bird for the Costume Parade, and the name stuck.”

 

“It’s cute,” you tell her, because you can’t say any of the other things almost tumbling out of your mouth. _I love you_ or _you fucking idiot_ or _I hate you_ or _what the fuck were you thinking_ or _you’re the most incredible person I’ve ever seen_.

 

“I’m not cute,” she mutters, and you worry that she’s fading again. She sounds like her mouth is full of marbles, and you spend the next 26 hours wondering if the next thing she says is “I’m terrifying” or “I’m terrified.”

 

But just then the ambulance pulls up, and you’re unceremoniously thrown out of the truck, and she’s loaded onto a stretcher and then they’re gone.

 

* * *

 

It’s Zari who finds you, hours later, huddled up in the ropes course shed, sobbing as hard as you ever have.

 

She sits down next to you, pressing her side against your side, and just sits silently.

 

When you finally look up, a long time later, you see that she’s reading a paperback. She reaches down to her side and, without looking up from her book, she holds something up in front of your face. “Donut?” she offers.

 

* * *

 

Twenty-six hours after the ambulance came, Sara finds you sitting inside a canoe, up on the beach.

 

“What’s with you and this stupid boat?”

 

You nearly tear your ACL, the way you throw yourself out of the boat. “Sara,” you breathe like you can’t believe it. Because you can’t. Because she’s walking and talking and last time you’d seen her she’d looked half dead at least.

 

“The one and only,” she says, and her old cheeky tone is back, like nothing ever happened.

 

“What are you doing here?” You sweep your hand to mean this beach, near these boats, when she so clearly hates it down at this part of camp. You hadn’t even known she was back from the hospital.

 

“Zari said she thought you’d be down here.”

 

You twist your hands behind your back, lest you reach out and touch her to make sure she’s real. “How are you feeling?”

 

“Like I drank seven shots of tequila on an empty stomach.” She flashes you a grin. “Twenty-first birthday flashbacks.”

 

“Are you seriously joking about this?”

 

Her eyes widen, her hands coming up in protest. “Hey, no.”

 

But you’re seeing red. “I watched you fucking die yesterday, Sara, and now you tracked me down all over camp to, what? Make a joke? Say it wasn’t a big deal?”

 

“No, that’s not—”

But you don’t let her finish. You can’t. “Because it was a fucking big deal, Sara. It was to me. I had to watch you—” your voice cracks and you have to stop, turning your back to her so she can’t see you break.

 

But before your first shudder has left your body you can feel her hands on your back, running down your arms, and what feels like her cheek pressing into your shoulder blade. “Ava, no.”

 

“You fucking asshole,” you gasp, your face buried in your hands. “I thought you were dead. You _fucking_ asshole.”

 

“I’m not dead,” she says into your neck. “It would take a lot more than that to kill me, Ava, I promise.”

 

And that’s a weird fucking promise, but you don’t say anything. You pull yourself together in time to see her letting go of your body and walking over to the canoe. She, with very stilted movements, steps inside of it, sitting down on the bench inside.

 

“Come on,” she says softly, her anxiety just a tiny ripple in her voice. “You promised me boat ride.”

 

“But,” you stammer, standing stupidly on the beach, your back burning where she’d touched you. “You’re scared of boats.”

 

“Yeah,” she says softly. “But I sort of died yesterday, so today seems like a good day to face my fears.”

 

* * *

 

After you ask if she’s sure like a hundred times, and you get her set up with two life jackets (one to wear and one to hold), you grab yourself a paddle and, as gently as you can, push the canoe into the water. She’s technically sitting the front of the boat but facing backwards, so you can see her face from your spot in the back. You step in, careful not to shake the canoe, and, after one last check, you silently paddle out to the middle of the lake.

 

“It’s peaceful out here,” she says, and there’s something like surprise in her voice.

 

You make a sound, something you hope is encouraging but you worry is more like a grunt.

 

“I used to come out here with Oliver,” she says, and you suddenly want to jump out of this canoe and swim very far away from here. “But he’d always rock the canoe, trying to tip me out. I’d always say no, but he’d do it anyway. One time the boat hit me in the head, and I almost drowned.”

 

Suddenly you have an urge to do a lot of physical damage with the very hard paddle in your hand. “He _what_?”

 

She’s looking down at her hands, but she nods. “Barry was in another boat, and he jumped in and pulled me up,” she says softly. “That was when…that was the last time he and I were together. It had…the whole thing had been a mistake, but that was when I knew.”

 

“Knew what?” Your voice is breathless but you can’t help it because the sun is setting and the girl in your boat is impossibly beautiful and you’ve never seen her this soft and open before.

 

“Knew that he was a total asshole.”

 

You snort with surprise, and she makes fun of you for it the whole way back.

 

* * *

 

“What are you afraid of?” She asks suddenly. You’ve just finished pulling the canoe up to shore and she’s unbuckling her life jacket and you look over at her, confused.

 

“What?”

 

“I just faced my fear,” she says, like it’s obvious. “Now I think you need to face one of yours.”

 

“I saw you pretty much die yesterday,” you remind her. “I think I’m good.”

 

But, “No,” she’s saying, and she’s walking closer to you, and there’s something in her gait that hasn’t been there in weeks. “That wasn’t a choice. You need to make a choice. Do something that scares you, on purpose. Right here, right now.” She’s all up in your personal space now, and she’s having to tilt her head up to look at you, and your pants are rolled up to your knees and lake water is pooling between your toes on the sand.

 

“So. What are you afraid of?”

 

She’s so beautiful and she’s so close to you and yesterday she’d pretty much died under your hands. “You,” your mouth whispers, completely without permission.

 

Her eyes widen, but not like she’s surprised. More like she’s pleased.

 

“You’re afraid of me?”

 

And the cat’s out of the bag, so you just nod. Your mouth is a little dry and her eyes are so blue and she’s smirking at you, cocky and impetuous but not at all bored.

 

“So. What are you gonna do about it, Sharpe?” she asks, and her mouth is right there and it’s perfect, and so you gather all of the courage you’ve never had, and you lean down, and you face your fear.

 

You kiss her, and it’s _good_. Long and soft but with this heat underneath it like it could explode at any second. Each time one of you starts to end it the other keeps it going, and you happily resign yourself to hours exploring her.

 

She sighs into your mouth, easy and sweet and hot, and sort of leans into your body. You reach up, sliding the life jacket off her shoulders to crumple silently onto the beach before you – so carefully – wrap your arms around her fragile back and pull her into you.

 

* * *

 

It’s Zari who finds you in Sara's bottom bunk, curled around Sara’s surprisingly small body, in the morning. “Geh aup,” she says, nudging your butt with her shoe, her mouth full of toothpaste. “You’re gahna miss breakfas.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, my hopefully new and old imaginary friends.
> 
> Come visit me on my tumblr (performativezippers) and twitter (p_zippers) to learn useless things about my life, read my rants, see endless gifs about dinosaurs, and support my other work. Heart ya.
> 
> p.s. please vote on Nov 6 if you can, oh my god please


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